This is the blog of DJ (@gkrew) and Brad, two guys who are just engineers on a messaging team supporting Microsoft Exchange Server. DJ is an IT Pro with experience as an Enterprise System Administrator in Microsoft Windows and Unix. Brad is a self-taught coder who develops code to assist with Exchange Administration using C# and PowerShell. There will be posts about Exchange, PowerShell, Active Directory, C# and scripts that you can use in your job as well as anything IT related.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Windows Server 2012 I hate your start button ...

Windows Server 2012 I hate your start button but I love your virtualization capabilities. I'm hoping my organization will be able to take advantage of your increased number of remote desktop connections, from the current OS we are using. I'm also totally stoked to use your virtualization failover services although I doubt my management will allow me to do that except for Sunday morning at 4am.

I tried [windowskey]+r and I did not get a run prompt, that better have been a fluke. There is no reason to take away my shortcut keys, it is just going to make more work for me to figure out how to put them back into the image. Edit, I just checked again and it was a fluke, but this lack of a my computer icon on the desktop is really throwing me. Hopefully the RTM has the ability to put a Computer icon and some other customizations that some of us admins have gotten used to, on the desktop. Fortunately all of the run commands such as mmc, services and calc are there, although I see you've taken my beloved charmap away. I see we are also back to a boxy, unasthetically pleasing look as a default, of which I can deal with because that graphic rendering is probably just additional overhead and it harkens back to my favorite OS of all time, Windows 2000.

All in all, I think you and I have a lot of potential Windows Server 2012. As long as you run my code and programs well, which I see no problem with because you are running .net 4.0, I'll be mostly happy. It make take a while to get used to your GUI changes, and I may never like them since I am much more efficient with a my computer desktop icon, but I'm willing to give it a chance if you are.

** UPDATE **
On a windows 8 laptop, I've installed http://www.classicshell.net/ . I'm not sure how keen management will be with having this on production boxes, but if you can sneak it into the default profile the Classic Shell is spectacular.

4 comments:

As a .NET developer in a business environment, I find it quite frustrating to not have the Start button to access programs grouped by vendor, as well as the Computer, Network, Control Panel, and Printers options for accessing management tools. This is especially frustrating as an admin working on many different of servers, where dozens of applications are loaded and all get grouped together on the start page. Additionally, I cannot find how to send shortcuts to the desktop from the start page or the taskbar, which would make life somewhat easier.

Windows has been successful because it gave users many ways to do the same thing, appealing to everyone's preferences (think menu vs hotkey vs button, etc). Why they think forcing everyone into a UI box will be a plus for the brand escapes me.

Server is the stupidest creation yet. It has the interface of a tablet. Phones and Tablets are NOT Servers. Why the hell change the interface to something so non-technical is beyond me. I can't even run aspnet_regiis -i from the command line. the Fing operating system doesn't support it unless run through a GUI?! WTF?! Someone should be flogged and fired over this decision.